The development of medical linear accelerators (linacs) has dramatically increased the practicality and efficiency of multi-field radiation therapy treatments. However, like many other complex systems, linear accelerators are subject to decreased efficiency or malfunction due to various causes. These causes may include, for example, damage or defects attributable to malfunctioning subcomponents or environmental factors. For example, as heavy consumers of electrical power, medical linear accelerators may be vulnerable to defective or compromised power sources. This may result in ineffective or inefficient operation of the linear accelerator.
Traditional methods of diagnosing and solving such problems, known as “troubleshooting,” often include usage of an oscilloscope. Oscilloscopes are a type of electronic test instrument which, when coupled (via probes) to an area exhibiting radio frequency or electrical activity (e.g., with an electric current, frequency, and/or voltage), generate a graphical display of the electrical activity, typically as a two-dimensional graph of one or more characteristics of the electrical activity plotted as a function of time. These graphical displays allow a technician to diagnose the defective component or source of malfunction, typically through the process of elimination.
Under traditional techniques for troubleshooting a linac, a field service representative would be required to be present at the location of the linear accelerator with a portable oscilloscope. Once in physical proximity with the linear accelerator, the field service representative would be required to manually connect the probes of the oscilloscope to areas of interest (e.g., power supply) of the linear accelerator. In a typical linear accelerator, there may be up to 16 or more areas of interest, corresponding to major components, sub-components, and the connections between of the linear accelerator. Unfortunately, typical oscilloscopes are equipped with only a few (e.g., two or four) probe devices. Oscilloscopes with even greater probes are exponentially more expensive. This requires that the field service representative manually reposition the oscilloscope probes to correspond to the areas of interest for each area of interest in excess of the number of probes, or sacrifice tremendous cost-effectiveness. Naturally, this can be an extremely user intensive process due to the effort and expertise required to manually reposition the oscilloscope probes. Even with more expensive oscilloscopes, such practice can result in significant delays—particularly to remote linear accelerators—due to the time required to travel to the linear accelerator site, and even then, connecting each probe to the areas of interest for each service operation—and each linear accelerator—can result in extremely compromised efficiency.